The Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furore over stolen e-mails.

More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fuelling scepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions.

One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.

Funny, I think I might feel uncomfortable signing an oath to not speak ill of data I’m trying to research and prove as fact. This is not a settled science as much as anybody would like to claim it is. Theories exist and until they are proven as fact, they merely remain as theories – which is why science seems to take forever. The idea that man can play such a huge role in something as large as our globe and the climate is sheer arrogance and egoism. Climate change is a naturally occurring event that has ebbed and flowed for decades if not eons. The more emails, the more proof, the more information that comes out on this hoax, the better for everybody. That’s not to say that people who disagree do not believe in taking care of their environment, it just means that the skeptics have serious doubts as to the legitimacy of any type of man-made climate change. I’d like to know how liberals can rail against big oil but seem to have no problem when their own side of the aisle is in the tank for Green Corporations and have much to gain from cap and tax – how is that any different?

Signing a pledge such as the one above seems to worsen the credibility and cause conflict of interest among people who became scientists to prove and disprove based on factual evidence. What if, at some point, global warming is proven to be a hoax? Scientists should not be held down by some oath that forces them to hide significant information from the public. There are other times in history when people had to pledge their allegiance to a cause, and that usually didn’t end very well…

The problem with the petition as a form is also a problem with the Met Office petition’s substance. The purpose of the petition is to shore up scientists’ authority by vouching for their integrity. But signing a loyalty oath under pressure from the government is itself a corrupt act. Anyone who signs this petition thereby raises doubts about his own integrity. And once again, the question arises: Why should any layman regard global warmism as credible when the “consensus” rests on political machinations, statistical tricks and efforts to suppress alternative hypotheses?

IMHO, any scientist who signs this petition has lost all credibility to be fair, reasonable, balanced, and able to report fact – not some fiction in which they signed onto.